The Queen's Fool

by Philippa Gregory

  “I will think about what you have told me,” she said, following her usual instinct to buy time. “Are you to stay with me? Or take an answer back to her?”

  “I am not to go back to court until Christmas,” I said. Temptingly, I added: “If you were to beg her forgiveness perhaps you could be at the court for Christmas. It’s very gay now, Princess, the court is filled with handsome grandees and there is dancing every night and the queen is merry.”

  She turned her head away from me. “I should not dance with a Spaniard even if I were to go.” She considered the picture for a moment. “They could throng around me and beg me to dance and I would not get to my feet.”

  “And you would be the only princess,” I reminded her persuasively. “The only princess in court. If you refused to dance they would all gather round you. And there would be new gowns. You would be the only virgin princess in England, at the greatest court in the world.”

  “I’m not a child to tempt with toys,” she said with quiet dignity. “And I am not a fool. You can go now, Hannah, you have served her and done her bidding. But for the rest of your stay here you shall serve me.”

  I nodded and rose to my feet. For a moment I hesitated; she did look so very sick as she lay on her bed facing the prospect of either a confession to treason or an unending imprisonment and disgrace. “God guide your ladyship,” I said with sudden compassion. “God guide you, Princess Elizabeth, and bring you safely out of here.”

  She closed her eyes and I saw her eyelashes were darkened with tears. “Amen,” she whispered.

  She did not do it. She would not confess. She knew that her stubbornness would condemn her to stay at Woodstock perhaps forever, and she feared that her health would not outlast the queen’s resentment. But to confess was to throw herself into the queen’s power absolutely, and she would not do that. She mistrusted Mary’s mercy, and the relentless Tudor stubbornness drove both sisters. Mary had been named as heir, and then named as bastard, and then made heir again. Exactly the same ordeal had been endured by Elizabeth. Both of them had decided never to surrender, always to claim their birthright, never to despair that the crown would come. Elizabeth would not relinquish the habit of a lifetime, not even for a chance to shine at a wealthy happy court and be received with honor. She might or might not be guilty, but she would never confess.

  “What am I to tell the queen?” I asked her at the end of a long week. The physicians had declared her on the way to health once more, they could take a message back to court for me. If Elizabeth continued to mend she could have ridden in triumph to court for Christmas, if only she would confess.

  “You can tell her a riddle,” Elizabeth said with feeble malice. She was seated in a chair, a pillow thrust behind her back to support her, a blanket wrapped around a hot brick under her cold feet.

  I waited.

  “You are a rhyming fool, are you not?”

  “No, Princess,” I said quietly. “As you know, I have no fooling skills.”

  “Then I will teach you a rhyme,” she said savagely. “You can write it to the queen if you wish. You can engrave it on every damned window in this hellhole if you wish.” She smiled grimly at me. “It goes like this:

  “Much suspected of me Nothing proved can be Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner.

  “Don’t you think that is neat?”

  I bowed and went to write my letter to the queen.

  Winter 1554–1555

  We waited, Christmas came and went and there was no joy for me either as I was ordered to stay with Elizabeth until she begged for forgiveness. It was freezing cold at Woodstock, there was not a window that did not direct a draft into the room, there was not a fire that did not smoke. The linen on the beds was always damp, the very floorboards underfoot were wet to the touch. It was a malevolent house in winter. I had been in good health when I arrived, and yet even I could feel myself growing weak from the relentless cold and the darkness, late dawns and early twilights. For Elizabeth, already exhausted by her ordeal in the Tower, always quick to go from anxiety to illness, the house was a killer.

  She was too ill to take any pleasure in the festivities, and they were scanty and mean. She was too weak to do more than look out of the window at the mummers who came to the door. She raised her hand to wave at them, Elizabeth would never fail an audience, but after they had gone she sank back on the daybed and lay still. Kat Ashley threw another log on the fire and it hissed as the frost in the grain of the wood started to melt and it smoked most miserably.

  I wrote to my father to wish him a merry Christmastide and to tell him that I missed him and hoped to see him soon. I enclosed a note for Daniel in which I sent him my best wishes. A few weeks later, in the cold snows of January when the drafty palace of Woodstock was a nightmare of coldness and darkness from gray dawn to early dusk, I had a letter from each of them. My father’s was brief and affectionate, saying that business was good in Calais, and would I please go to check on the shop in London when I was next in the city. Then I opened my letter from Daniel.

  Dear wife-to-be, I am writing to you from the city of Padua to wish you the compliments of the season and hope that this finds you well, as it leaves me. Your father and my family are in good health at Calais and looking for you every day as we hear that matters are quite settled in England now with the queen with child and Lady Elizabeth to leave England and live with Queen Mary of Hungary. When she leaves England I trust you will come to Calais where my mother and sisters await you.I am here to study at the great university of medicine. My master suggested that I should come here to learn the art of surgery, at which the Italians and especially the Padua university has excelled, also the pharmacopeia. I will not trouble you with my studies — but Hannah! These men are unfolding the very secrets of life, they are tracing the flow of the humors around the body and in Venice, which is nearby, they see how the tides and the rivers flow around the body of the world also. I cannot tell you what it is like to be here and to feel that every day we are coming a little closer to understanding everything — from the rise and fall of the tides to the beat of the heart, from the distillation of an essence to the ingredients of the philosopher’s stone.You will be surprised to hear that I came upon John Dee in Venice last month when I was listening to a lecture by a very learned friar who is skilled in the use of poisons to kill the disease and yet save the patient. Mr. Dee is much respected here for his reputation for learning. He lectured on Euclid and I attended, though I did not understand more than one word in ten. But I think the better of him now that I have seen him in this company with these men who are forging a new sense of the world and one which will transform what we know about everything — from the smallest grain to the greatest planet. He has a most brilliant mind, I understand much better why you think so highly of him.I was glad to get your letter and to know that you think that you will finish your service with the princess soon, I trust then you will ask the queen to release you. I am considering now whether we could live away from England for some years. Hannah, my love, Venice is such an exciting city to be in, and the weather so bright and fine, and the men and women so prosperous and the doctors so learned — you cannot blame me for wanting to stay here and for wanting you to share it with me. It is a city of tremendous wealth and beauty, there are no roads at all but canals and the lagoon everywhere, and everyone takes a boat to their doorstep. The study and the scholars here are quite extraordinary and anything can be asked and answered.I keep your first letter in my doublet against my heart. Now I put your Christmas note beside it and wish you had written more. I think of you daily and dream of you every night.This is a new world that we are making, with new understandings of the movements of the planets and of the tides. Of course it must be possible that a man and a wife could be married in a new way also. I do not want you as my servant, I want you as my love. I assure you that you shall have the freedom to be your own sweet self. Write to me again and tell me you will come to me soon. I am yours in thought and word and deed and even th
ese studies of mine which fill me with such hope and excitement would mean nothing if I did not think that one day I could share them with you.Daniel

  Daniel’s second letter promising love to me went the way of the first, into the fire; but not until I had read it half a dozen times. It had to be destroyed, it was filled with heretical notions that would have trapped me into an inquiry if it had been read by anyone else. But I burned this second letter with regret. I thought that in it I heard the true voice of a young man growing into wisdom, of a betrothed man planning his marriage, of a passionate man looking toward his life with a woman of his choice, of a man I could trust.

  It was a long and cold winter and Elizabeth grew no better. The news from the court that the queen was healthy and growing stout did not make her half sister any merrier as she lay, wrapped in furs, her nose red from cold, looking out of a window of cracked glass over a garden blasted by icy winds and neglect.

  We heard that the parliament had restored the Roman Catholic religion and the members had wept for joy to be received once more into the body of the church. There had been a service of thanksgiving that they should once again receive the papal rule that they had once thrown off. On that day Elizabeth looked very bleak as she saw her father’s inheritance and her brother’s greatest pride thrown away in her sister’s victory. From that day on, Elizabeth observed the Mass three times a day with her head obediently bowed. There was no more sliding away from observance. The stakes had gone up.

  As the light grew brighter in the morning and the snow melted and drained away into standing puddles of cold water Elizabeth grew a little stronger and started to walk in the garden once more, me running alongside her in my thin-soled riding boots, wrapped against the cold in a blanket, blowing on my icy hands, complaining of the icy wind.

  “It would be colder in Hungary,” she said shortly.

  I did not remark that everyone seemed to know the queen’s private plans for her. “You would be an honored guest in Hungary,” I replied. “There would be a warm fire to come back to.”

  “There is only one fire the queen would build for me,” Elizabeth said grimly. “And if I once went to Hungary you would see it would become such a home for me that I would never be allowed to see England again. I won’t go. I won’t ever leave England. You can tell her that, when she asks you. I will never leave England willingly, and English men and women will never let me be bundled away as a prisoner. I am not without friends even though I am without a sister.”

  I nodded and kept diplomatically silent.

  “But if not Hungary, which she has never yet had the courage to propose to me direct, then what?” she asked aloud. “And God — when?”

  Spring 1555

  To everyone’s surprise the queen weakened first. As the bitter winter melted into a wet spring, Elizabeth was bidden to court, without having to confess, without even writing a word to her sister, and I was ordered to ride in her train, no explanation offered to me for the change of heart and none expected. For Elizabeth it was not the return she might have wanted; she was brought in almost as a prisoner, we traveled early in the morning and late in the afternoon so that we would not be noticed, there was no smiling and waving at any crowds. We skirted the city, the queen had ordered that Elizabeth should not ride down the great roads of London, but as we went through the little lanes I felt my heart skip a beat in terror and I pulled up my horse in the middle of the lane, and made the princess stop.

  “Go on, fool,” she said ungraciously. “Kick him on.”

  “God help me, God help me,” I babbled.

  “What is it?”

  Sir Henry Bedingfield’s man saw me stock-still, turned his horse and came back. “Come on now,” he said roughly. “Orders are to keep moving.”

  “My God,” I said again, it was all I could say.

  “She’s a holy fool,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps she is having a vision.”

  “I’ll give her a vision,” he said, and took the bridle and pulled my horse forward.

  Elizabeth came up alongside. “Look, she’s white as a sheet and shaking,” she said. “Hannah? What is it?”

  I would have fallen from my horse but for her steadying hand on my shoulder. The soldier rode on the other side, dragging my horse onward, his knee pressed against mine, half holding me in the saddle.

  “Hannah!” Elizabeth’s voice came again as if from a long way away. “Are you ill?”

  “Smoke,” was all I could say. “Fire.”

  Elizabeth glanced toward the city, where I pointed. “I can’t smell anything,” she said. “Are you giving a warning, Hannah? Is there going to be a fire?”

  Dumbly, I shook my head. My sense of horror was so intense that I could say nothing but, as if from somewhere else, I heard a little mewing sound like that of a child crying from a deep unassuageable distress. “Fire,” I said softly. “Fire.”

  “Oh, it’s the Smithfield fires,” the soldier said. “That’s upset the lass. It’s that, isn’t it, bairn?”

  At Elizabeth’s quick look of inquiry he explained. “New laws. Heretics are put to death by burning. They’re burning today in Smithfield. I can’t smell it but your little lass here can. It’s upset her.” He clapped me on the shoulder with a heavy kindly hand. “Not surprising,” he said. “It’s a bad business.”

  “Burning?” Elizabeth demanded. “Burning heretics? You mean Protestants? In London? Today?” Her eyes were blazing black with anger but she did not impress the soldier. As far as he was concerned we were little more value than each other. One girl dumb with horror, the other enraged.

  “Aye,” he said briefly. “It’s a new world. A new queen on the throne, a new king at her side, and a new law to match. And everyone who was reformed has reformed back again and pretty smartly too. And good thing, I say, and God bless, I say. We’ve had nothing but foul weather and bad luck since King Henry broke with the Pope. But now the Pope’s rule is back and the Holy Father will bless England again and we can have a son and heir and decent weather.”

  Elizabeth said not one word. She took her pomander from her belt, put it in my hand and held my hand up to my nose so I could smell the aromatic scent of dried orange and cloves. It did not take away the stink of burning flesh, nothing would ever free me from that memory. I could even hear the cries of those on the stakes, begging their families to fan the flames and to pile on timber so that they might die the quicker and not linger, smelling their own bodies roasting, in a screaming agony of pain.

  “Mother,” I choked, and then I was silent.

  We rode to Hampton Court in an icy silence and we were greeted as prisoners with a guard. They bundled us in the back door as if they were ashamed to greet us. But once the door of her private rooms was locked behind us Elizabeth turned and took my cold hands in hers.

  “I could not smell smoke, nobody could. The soldier only knew that they were burning today, he could not smell it,” she said.

  Still I said nothing.

  “It was your gift, wasn’t it?” she asked curiously.

  I cleared my throat, I remembered that curious thick taste at the back of my tongue, the taste of the smoke of human flesh. I brushed a smut from my face, but my hand came away clean.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “You were sent by God to warn me that this was happening,” she said. “Others might have told me, but you were there; in your face I saw the horror of it.”

  I nodded. She could take what she might from it. I knew that it was my own terror she had seen, the horror I had felt as a child when they had dragged my own mother from our house to tie her to a stake and light the fire under her feet on a Sunday afternoon as part of the ritual of every Sunday afternoon, part of the promenade, a pious and pleasurable tradition to everyone else; the death of my mother, the end of my childhood for me.

  Princess Elizabeth went to the window, knelt and put her bright head in her hands. “Dear God, thank you for sending me this messenger with this vision,” I heard her
say softly. “I understand it, I understand my destiny today as I have never done before. Bring me to my throne that I may do my duty for you and for my people. Amen.”

  I did not say “Amen,” though she glanced around to see if I had joined in her prayer; even in moments of the greatest of spirituality, Elizabeth would always be counting her supporters. But I could not pray to a God who could allow my mother to be burned to death. I could not pray to a God who could be invoked by the torchbearers. I wanted neither God nor His religion. I wanted only to get rid of the smell in my hair, in my skin, in my nostrils. I wanted to rub the smuts from my face.

  She rose to her feet. “I shan’t forget this,” she said briefly. “You have given me a vision today, Hannah. I knew it before, but now I have seen it in your eyes. I have to be queen of this country and put a stop to this horror.”

  In the evening, before dinner, I was summoned to the queen’s rooms and found her in conference with the king and with the new arrival and greatest favorite: the archbishop and papal legate, Cardinal Reginald Pole. I was in the presence chamber before I saw him, for if I had known he was there I would never have crossed the threshold. I was immediately, instinctively afraid of him. He had sharp piercing eyes, which would look unflinchingly at sinners and saints alike. He had spent a lifetime in exile for his beliefs and he had no doubt that everyone’s convictions could and should be tested by fire as his had been. I thought that if he saw me, even for one second, he would smell me out and know me for a Marrano — a converted Jew — and that in this new England of Catholic conviction that he and the king and the queen were making, they would exile me back to my death in Spain at the very least, and execute me in England if they could.